These are considerations for which allowance must be made in estimating what was morbid in Miss Nightingale's moods. But for the most part the despondency and the self-abasement which coloured her meditations, and which sometimes appear in her letters, were the expression of the mystical way of her soul. They are the utterance of a soul which was striving after perfection, and found the path difficult and thorny. Miss Nightingale was masterful and eager; she had often been able to impress her will upon men and upon events; she found it difficult to bear disappointments and vexations with that entire resignation which the mystics taught her. She was "out of office"; she had been interrupted, suddenly and painfully, in a long career of almost unceasing action. The pause in her public life gave her new occasion for self-criticism and fresh consciousness of the difficulty of sustaining in active life that absolute purity of motive which makes light even of success or failure. She strove to attain, and she taught others to ensue, passivity in action--to do the utmost in their power, but to leave the result to a Higher Power. In a poem which gave her much comfort in later years she marked this passage:-- Abstaining from attachment to the work, Abstaining from rewardment in the work, While yet one doeth it full faithfully, Saying, "'Tis right to do!"--that is true act And abstinence! Who doeth duties so, Unvexed if his work fail, if it succeed Unflattered, in his own heart justified, Quit of debates and doubts, his is "true" act.[146] [146] Sir Edwin Arnold's _The Song Celestial_ (translated from the Mahâbhârata): see below, p. 401.